21st Century Learners

Prensky's article poses a question about engaging our young learners in the digital world - "Engage me or enrage me." Wow.

Let me tell you about the last 12 hours with my 6 year old daughter. When she got home she did her homework. She read her home reader (level 8 which is probably just above average for her year level), she did her maths in her homework book (basic mathematical addition counting and writing and adding), and then we went to her sight words. She is on the 'violet' level. Again probably just above average. (I will come back to this point in a moment.)

Last night I had a game of indoor netball and my daughters came to watch.  During the game my 6yo watched me play some of the time, played with other kids for some of the time and played her DS (a portable computer game) for another short while.

We sang along to their tune of choice on the way home in the car (the car radio has an IPOD connector built in) and then we read a book and went to bed.

Back to the sight words - in the violet level there are two words that sound the same but were spelt differently - homophones. The two words were 'their' and 'there'.  My 6 yo asked me if I could find her a video on the differences between the two words. There are a lot of you tube videos on the topic of homophones, but I needed to find one that was age appropriate. It took over an hour to sift through the videos to find one. There is a lot of stuff on the www!

Whilst I couldn't find a movie specifically on their/they're and there - this is the one I showed her click here. Then we did some magic, (I am a terrible magician!!).

Can you see what happened here though? My 6yo asked me to use technology to explain a topic she was interested in. She now knows what a homophone is. Well sort of...  it's a bit above her ability yet as she can't really spell words that have more than 3 letters!!  Ha ha. However you get the point! I wonder if she will still struggle with the spelling and use of the their/there/they're words though?

All good teachers need to engage their students by harnessing their interests, and use what ever resources they have available and suitable for the age level and topic of discussion. We don't need to use technology all of the time but if it is available, why wouldn't we use it?